Going outside the Loop, except for barbecue and crawfish-related reasons.

Going outside the Loop, except for barbecue and crawfish-related reasons.

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Hurricanes, which could always ruin your vacation plans.

Hurricanes, which could always ruin your vacation plans.

Photo: Smiley N. Pool / Houston Chronicle

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The cowboy stereotype gets real old, but only until RodeoHouston time, when we really play it up.

The cowboy stereotype gets real old, but only until RodeoHouston time, when we really play it up.

Photo: James Nielsen / Houston Chronicle

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Margaritas that come out of machines are not cool.

Margaritas that come out of machines are not cool.

Photo: AP

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Our public transportation system. Or lack of. ...

Our public transportation system. Or lack of. ...

Photo: Karen Warren / Houston Chronicle

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The promised cold front that never comes.

The promised cold front that never comes.

Photo: Getty

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"Houston, we have a problem," is the problem

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We Houstonians humbly come to you, the rest of the world, to ask that you stop using the phrase “Houston, we have a problem.”

It’s bad enough that you are using a line, misquoted, from Apollo 13, a movie that was released nearly 19 years ago. What’s more, the line was misquoted from the actual doomed mission to the moon that ended up becoming one of the most harrowing moments of manned space exploration.

“Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here,” said Apollo 13 astronaut Jack Swigert, relaying the news of an oxygen tank blowing inside the lunar service module. Fellow astronaut Jim Lovell then came up behind him over the radio waves from somewhere between here and the moon and said, “Houston, we’ve had a problem.” Cue James Horner’s epic score … or just listen to the NASA recording here.

No, we don’t have a problem. You all seem to have a problem with using a quote from a movie from 1995. You don’t see me quoting Waterworld everywhere, do you? Well, whenever Houston goes through one of those manic raining jags it is fun to yell “Dry land is a myth!” in public to see who laughs.

There are a lot of new people in Houston who probably think it’s hilarious to say the phrase now that they live here. No doubt, they will caption their copious Instagram pictures of car dash thermometers in July with the phrase, and their friends back in Minnesota will giggle at triple-digit temperatures at midnight.

Whoever spray painted the side of the space shuttle replica Independence last year couldn’t even come up with anything clever themselves and just altered the line to “mark” the shuttle replica.

Sheila Jackson Lee and the phrase are commonly paired by blogs that are less than supportive of the congresswoman. I assume she has an opinion on that.

Mission Control, an NBC sitcom pilot about a female aerospace engineer, played by Krysten Ritter from Breaking Bad, who leads a team of NASA scientists is planned. You’ll never guess the first sentence of the online promo materials. Nope, it’s not “Being a pretty woman in a male-dominated industry in the ’60s was rough …”

Since our sports teams haven’t been that stellar lately, we get to see it more and more in tweets and web headlines. Go ahead and set up a Google alert for it and see what happens.

Andre Johnson “complains” about the direction of the new Houston Texans coaching regime.

“Houston, we have a problem.”

The Houston Rockets playoff run ends in thousands of pieces on the ground.

“Houston, we have a problem.”

The Astros have one-game bursts of brilliance and then puzzle us with Bad News Bears-style play for six games after.

“Houston, we have a problem that you’ve all known about for like, years now.”

According to the United States Postal Service, Houston leads all U.S. cities in most cases of dog attacks on postal workers, with 63 confirmed cases of Fido biting your local Mr. McFeely in the past fiscal year. You know somewhere someone is typing a headline right now about how we “have a problem” with dogs biting mail carriers.

So, guys, gals, fellow Texans, let’s put this quote to bed and hold a pillow over its head until it stops moving. We’ll all feel better for it.